


birds of a feather

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Board Games, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-04-24 05:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19166383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Three scenes with games: Before, during, and after the Snap.





	birds of a feather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



"I haven't played this since we were kids," Ward says, looking down at the Monopoly board.

"You mean since you cheated your ass off and kicked me under the table," Danny replies mildly. He's playing the racecar, and Colleen has the Scottie dog. "We'll deal you in, sit down."

Ward frowns. "I don't think you can just deal someone in in Monopoly."

"Oh look, you're the top hat, here's some money, it's your turn," Colleen says. She gives him a challenging look. "You're in, let's go."

"Well, when you put it that way," Ward grumbles, and moves a chair over. "This game is shitty with only two players anyway," he adds, rolling the dice.

Colleen flips him off, looking unimpressed, but the expression on Danny's face is nothing short of delighted. "I'm glad you're getting along," he says, and Ward half fumbles the top hat along its route, while Colleen coughs pointedly.

"I don't want to kill him or sue him anymore - so that is a step up, I will grant you that," she says. Ward gives her his best boardroom smile and stops on Vermont Avenue. He buys it. 

It's Danny's turn next. He looks at the board with a critical eye, then rolls a seven. The racecar lands on a tax space. Colleen holds out her hand. "Pay up, baby."

"Why is she the banker?" Ward asks Danny, who shrugs. His sloppy sweatshirt nearly falls off his shoulder. Clearly, on the weekends he reverts to his previous, more homeless style of dress. 

"I'm not much better at this game than I was when we were kids," he says, pushing the sleeves back from his hands and counting out slips of money to Colleen.

"Is there even money in Kun'lun?"

"No."

Collen smothers a laugh and takes her turn. She lands on Illinois Avenue, which already has four houses, and upgrades to a hotel. Ward looks at what properties she owns versus what Danny owns. "Colleen, you want a job?"

She flips him off. Ward rolls and winds up in jail.

*

It's quiet in the dojo. There's almost no street noise from outside the windows, no bicycle bells, no men shouting in Chinese about the day's business. Only a few cab horns honking from what sounds like several blocks away. It's a small thing, but Ward is still unsettled by it.

"Here," Colleen says, setting a bowl by his elbow. "Eat. You look like shit."

Ward is well aware he looks like shit. Megan said the same thing three hours ago. "I've been working," he tells Colleen, who sits down across from him at the table with her own bowl and the deck of cards. 

"Uh-huh. Eat."

The bowl is hot, puffs of steam and the scent of garlic and ginger rising. "Thanks," Ward murmurs. He fumbles getting his hand to work the chopsticks, but only for a second. "What are we playing tonight?" he asks around a mouthful.

"Slap Jack."

They eat without speaking for a few minutes, the only sound the whisper-light scrape of chopsticks. It's a basic stir-fried vegetables and cubes of tofu, but it's more than Ward ever learned to cook, and spicy enough that it warms his mouth and throat. "How's business?" he asks quietly, when his bowl is empty.

"It's enough. I had someone new sign up this week. Two, actually. A woman and her eleven year-old son. The dad…" She waves her chopsticks in a way Ward interprets to mean _disappeared along with everyone else_. "They live in a shitty building, some of the apartments have been broken into."

Colleen puts her bowl down, and Ward sees clearly the dark circles under her eyes, the hollowness of her face. "And how's Colleen?" he asks, even quieter. He hasn't felt like speaking at a normal volume since the Snap; it's still strange.

"I can't be everywhere," she answers, and he knows she's speaking about the Fist. 

"You need to let go of the idea that you should be able to." 

Her gaze sharpens and she points a chopstick at him. "What are you, my therapist? Shuffle the deck."

*

"I think we're all too competitive for this game," Ward says once he's read the directions booklet. He waves it at Danny. "One of us is going to end up bombing Scandinavia."

"Really, Ward, Scandinavia?" 

"You can't bomb places in Risk," Colleen says, her voice dry. "Didn't you guys play this as kids?"

"Uh, we were expected to lead a corporation, not an army," Ward replies. He starts counting out infantry. 

"Our dads just told us to play Monopoly," Danny adds. 

Colleen is staring at them both now. She gestures at the board and scoffs, her face a picture of disbelief. "Your dads didn't see the _strategic value_ in having you play Risk?" 

"Maybe they didn't want us to catch on so early," Danny says to Ward. He readjusts the stupid headband holding back an unruly mop of curls; Ward wants to tell him to get a haircut but he's more glad that Danny's back than he thought possible, so he keeps his mouth shut. 

He glances over his shoulder to where Anna is asleep on the futon with the giant, oddly realistic looking plush duck Danny found somewhere tucked under her arm, her own unruly hair falling over her face and moving slightly as she breathes. Just looking at her helps to fill the aching space in his chest, a little more each time. 

He thinks it'll probably take a while to fill five years of emptiness. 

"You know that Monopoly is supposed to be a critique of capitalism, right?" Colleen is asking Danny.

"No, why would I know that?"

"Sometimes it's like you were raised by wolves and not monks," she says. She's shaking her head, but smiling. Not for the first time, Ward wonders what fate it was that the two of them found each other. "Ward, what happened to handing out all the pieces?"

His hands are still full of tiny plastic soldiers. "Right." 

"Anna's out cold, so Ward doesn't have anywhere else to be tonight anyway," Danny adds, smiling widely at him. "Game night at Auntie Colleen's turned into naptime at Auntie Colleen's."

Colleen rolls her eyes but doesn't protest his language. "I'll make tea," she says, getting up from her chair. Ward resumes counting out the pieces.


End file.
